Irrigation is an important aspect of landscaping. A properly designed irrigation system should supply enough water to guarantee plant health and keep wasted water at a minimum. Some traditional watering systems allow their users to manually program watering schedules. Such systems generally have suboptimal water usage since the watering schedules typically do not take into account the current rate of water loss.
Some more sophisticated irrigation systems have watering units with built-in programs that adjust the amount of water applied by the watering units. The sensors provide feedback to the watering units, which use the information to adjust the amount of water used. Such systems, however, tend to be expensive for several reasons. The watering units are required to have built-in intelligence for computing new watering schedules based on sensor input and/or user input. Additionally, changes to the configuration process or watering formula require that hardware and/or software upgrades be made to each watering unit.
It would be desirable to have a cost effective irrigation system that could calculate a watering schedule based on information source available to the system, and provide an updated watering schedule to a watering unit as needed. It would also be useful if such a system could adjust its watering schedule automatically.